For the first time in untold years, I focused on the golden light streaming through the trees, the delicate color of rose on her lips, and the heady scent of flowers and water emanating from her hair.
I wanted to meet her again under different circumstances and find out exactly why she could tolerate my curse.
Are you sure it’s the only reason?my conscience purred.Perhaps you want to present yourself in a better light.
No, that wasn’t it at all. I needed to investigate her immunity from my mark to see if it meant something bigger. I also needed to watch her, find out if she was truly who she said she was because only angels were immune to my curse. Plus, I could have fun while doing it.
“Forget.” I passed a hand over her face, and her eyes closed. A soft exhalation escaped her mouth, and she drooped toward me.
Excitement stuttered my heart, and with a gentle touch, I collected her collapsing form into my arms and blinked her to the dry creek, out of sight of the others, but close enough when she awoke, she’d not be too disoriented.
A few days playing with my prey wouldn’t be a big deal. And it would give me time to puzzle out her unique resistance. In all my wandering years, no human had ever survived looking upon me without losing their mind. And my touch, well, it killed within minutes.
Except with Phoebe.
My father had made sure I would never mingle with my kind again. But the punishing curse had turned into a dark blessing, and I reveled in my ability to destroy, to claim, todominate.
Once she bored me, I’d take her soul and move on to my true assignment. Phoebe meant nothing, and she served as a reminder of why I’d originally signed up to become a soul stealer. I would discard her as easily as I’d forsaken the thousands who’d come before and the thousands who would die afterwards.
Black tendrils of power curled and retracted into my body, caressing my skin with their familiar, silky touch, filling the void of emptiness in my heart with the promise of more to come if I could hold on a little longer. I’d been patient for so long, and I’d earn my wings any day now. Lucian had been hinting at it for months.
Soon, I will get what I’ve longed for all these millennia then deal my vengeance.
When that day came, the careful control I kept on my emotions would unleash, and not even Heaven would be safe from my fury.
Chapter 4
Phoebe
“Yo, Phoebe. You okay?”
Someone patted my cheek, and even with my eyes closed, bright orangish light filtered through the skin of my eyelids.
Squinting and putting a hand to my forehead, I stared at Tara’s worried face. Her carrot-colored hair, damp with sweat, hung limply on either side of her ears. She knelt over me, scrunching her eyebrows inward.
“Yeah”—I sat and a wave of dizziness swirled in my head—“must’ve fallen.”
